In recent years, personal computers (hereinafter, referred to as “PC”) have been widely spread and used for a personal purpose or on business. For example, a PC is connected to an external device serving as an information input source or an external device for performing an operation based on a command from the PC in a communication-practicable manner. Specifically, the PC is supplied with a large amount of data from the external devices and the information is used and managed by the PC, while the processes based on the managed information are performed to the external devices. In the environment in which it is difficult to install a plurality of external devices corresponding to the processes, a so-called multifunction machine having a plurality of units that execute a plurality of functions is connected to the PC.
The PC and the external devices transmit and receive a large amount of information therebetween in association with operations of the external devices, and the large amount of information is managed by the PC (for example, see JP-A-2004-32085).
In the PC for managing a large amount of data, there have been suggested techniques of correlating data with each other so as to enhance the efficiency of works using the data to be managed.
For example, there is known an information management system which can perform the correlating operation by allowing a message requesting for an instruction of correlating conditions to be displayed and allowing a user to give an instruction in response to the display, so as to correlate the data to be written with other data at the time of writing data (for example, see JP-A-2000-315203).